


As the twig is bent, the tree is inclined

by FuckingCurlyWurly



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Detective Noir, F/F, Nordic Noir - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-09-24 07:24:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17096345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FuckingCurlyWurly/pseuds/FuckingCurlyWurly
Summary: Thasmin Christmas Exchange prompt:Noir Christmas AU. It’s been years since Yaz has been the Doctor’s companion and she’s become a seasoned Detective Inspector that’s seen too much. The Doctor runs into her on a case and is surprised at how much she’s changed.





	As the twig is bent, the tree is inclined

**Author's Note:**

  * For [InLust](https://archiveofourown.org/users/InLust/gifts).



Norwegian mud has to be she shittiest, most annoying mud there is. It somehow manages to be with sticky, slippery, cold and wet at the same time. One would think the standard-issue-heavy-duty-Norwegian-police-boot would be prepared for that, but as Detective Inspector Yasmin Khan had experienced personally many a time, the bot remained completely unphased by this, and continued its amazingly shitty performance. The mud released the boot with a revealing, wet smacking noise, and inspector Khan froze on the spot. She stood completely still for a full minute, not even breathing, letting the chilling rain soak her where she stood. Only after confirming that the cold, December night was as quiet as it was dark, she attempted a second step.

_Schlorpp._

Damn useless weather. Damn useless country.

Slowly, she made her way though the thicket, closing in on the first of a row of pricey suburban villas. The porch lights shone like beacons in the distance, and for the briefest of moments, her mind flashed tempting projections of her life in that house. A family, a steady job. Dry clothes and a roof over her head at night. Useless thoughts. This was dangerous enough without daydreaming on the job.

The guys back at the office had initially tried to stop her from going out here alone, too much of a risk without backup. But of course, there wasn’t room in the budget for a two-man stakeout. Christoffer would no doubt have come with her, had she let him. But the man had kids. Kids need a parent at night. Especially in times like these, with the whole city on their toes. Inspector Yaz leant against a small pine tree in the thicket, rain and dirt streaking her face. She could barely make out the road sign below the driveway through the trees. Svaleveien. This was where the second body was found last week. Sometimes the poshest neighbourhoods proved to be the most treacherous, after all.

The large, grey-painted house loomed over her as she made it past the first and the second residentials. It might be white in the daylight, but who could tell. Large birch trees swayed in the frigid winds on either side of the front yard, obscuring the view of the windows. She’d have to get closer to tell if anybody was home. Anne, the woman who lived there and a witness to the second murder, had texted her earlier that day. She’d thought it was nothing, but she’d felt uneasy during her yardwork, like someone was watching her. Chris would have shrugged it off, but not Detective Inspector Yasmin Khan. She hadn’t been the first decorated female Detective Inspector in the precinct by not listening to her gut, and this paranoia had gut feelings draped all over it. To be fair, she’d only been decorated detective inspector Yasmin Khan back in the day, while she was still in England. She never thought she’d long to go back there, but that was before she got stuck in this god-forsaken ice box of a country.

_Snap._

The quiet, dry sound of a small twig splintering apart. Her eyes widened as the noise registered, and her basic training took over. She never got used to the feeling of the absolute terror of a situation like this, abruptly being snapped away and her actions replaced by regulation procedure. In mere seconds, her knee was on the sopping ground as she aimed her issued pistol at the offender. She hadn’t even registered what she was aiming at, before she yelled out “POLICE! SHOW ME YOUR HANDS!”.

It must be human, an animal would have run by now.

“I AM ARMED AND I WILL SHOOT. SHOW ME YOUR HANDS!”

The adrenaline rush slowed everything down, and a tiny little dark streak in her curled in delight and forbidden expectation of what was to come.

“Please don’t shoot, I’m…” The faint voice drowned in the wind and the weather.

“SPEAK UP. KEEPS YOUR HAND WHERE I CAN SEE THEM.” Yasmin heard her own voice as if someone else shouted the words for her. Keeping the gun aimed at the blurry silhouette of a person, she slowly approached it. It looked like a teenager. Slim build, half-length shaggy hair, impractical clothing. The details appeared more clearly as the made a mental note of their appearance for later. It was silly, but that coat seemed… and the cut of the trousers… _Oh._

Recognition hit her like a fist punch to the stomach.

“Please don’t shoot me,” pleaded the no-longer-stranger. “I’m the Doctor. I’m here to help.”

For once in her life, Yasmin Khan didn't know what to do. Open mouthed, she lowered her firearm and just stared. 

The Doctor had to be the one to break the silence. "Yaz? Is tha... Yaz!" She lunged forward and tackled the stunned investigator into a hug, completely disregarding the armed weapon she’d been facing only moments before.

The lunge caught Yaz off guard, and she just managed to throw her armed hand out to the side before they both tumbled to the ground. The mud sloshed all around her, completely ruining all hope of a discreet stakeout. The doctor grinned manically down at her, face inches apart from her own.

“YAZ! It’s you! How can it be you, I thought- I though you were locked in th-“

 

_Snap._

 

Yaz' head whipped around and clamped her hand firmly over the Doctors' mouth, pulling the Doctor down beside her. The Doctor sent her her most indignant glare. 

"That was close" Yaz whispered under her breath. "We gotta get out of here. You can't be here for this". Before the Doctor managed to disagree, a child's scream pierced the night.  

Their wide-eyed gazes met, but Yaz was the first to grab the others hand and uttering the magic word: "Run!" 

 

Scuffed, exhausted and gasping for breath, the two mud-covered forest-dwellers tumbled out of the thicket and onto the dimly lit pavement, the looming dark house seemed ghostly in front of them as they approached. Scaling the front steps in a single leap, Yaz pressed her back to the doorframe and stole a moment to steady her breath.

"POLICE! ANYONE IN THERE?" Yaz had taken the lead and banged loudly on the door.

"Blimey Yaz, do you really ha-" "POLICE! STAY BACK FROM THE DOOR!"

The Doctor just manage to step aside before one shitty, standards issue, police boot crashed down on the door, slamming it open. 

"You wait here" she told the Doctor, drawing her firearm before turning to the darkness within. "I'M COMING IN. PUT YOUR HANDS WHERE I CAN SEE THEM" 

The Doctor was baffled. Who was this person? Could she have recognised the wrong person? Was this her fault? A pang of guilt hit her. But she had had no choice. She shook it off and ran inside. Not the time.

 

Hours later, the two unlikely partners in investigation ducked under the police tape covering the doorway and headed for the only pub in Oslo that was open 24/7. They walked in the bleak blue light of the northern sunrise in silence. 

Although the Doctor appreciated the cool visual immensely, a thousand question raced through her head and there was no chance of containing any of them.

"So if Hanna saw someone in the window, why didn't she investigate it?"

"Cause she's a child, Doctor"

"Children are braver than you think, Yaz"

"Well this child isn't one of your intergalactic-hero-idealisations. She's just a normal eight-year-old child who saw a stranger in the window, and thanks to her, we get to go out her we get go out here and do this again tomorrow night. And when I say we, I mean the actual police and I." 

"But what if the thing she saw comes back? Shouldn't we stay here? And why were you in the forest to begin with? Why-"

"Look, Doctor, I'm exhausted, I'm wet and I almost just shot a person I up until now thought was imaginary, okay? I really, really just need a drink and a change of clothes before I can deal with you. Now can you shut up for just one god-forsaken minute?"

The Doctor's face fell. She looked like a kicked puppy in her raggedy jacket, worn thin by time and travel. Yaz only now noticed the scuffed boots, the rift in the seam of her trousers, the shaggy hair. Her disappointment was somehow made worse by her clearly neglected outfit. How long had it been since... well, the time she didn't think had ever been.

 

The Doctor was carded, or course, going into the bar. It was the sort of bar that is a café if you accuse it of being a bar, but will eternally remain a bar, no matter how many concept changes and re-brandings you attempt. Ignoring the row of craft-beer taps, Yaz just raised two fingers to the bartender and immediately received a swift nod back. She held a steady course towards the darkest, innermost corner of the room and sunk down on the heavy couch. The Doctor looked spectacularly out of place, and could still theoretically be imaginary, but at least this was a suitable place for conversations with imaginary creatures. 

 The heavy set, dark-haired server put their drinks down solemnly and promptly left them alone. A small puddle was forming under Yaz' feet. The Doctor was the one who broke the silence as she always had to be.

"So Yasmin Khan is a gun-person now, huh?"

"I'm a Detective Inspector now," Yaz' corrected dryly. "It's part on the deal. You knew I was a cop, I was one even back then." She raised the glass and took a heavy swig, foam settling on her lips.

"Yeah, but you were never a gun-person, even then. I know you, Yaz, you're not the type."

"Apparently you don't know me very well at all. How could you really when you've been away for, what, ten years now?”

The Doctor shook her head, the hurt puppy look replaced with blatant disbelief.

"People change, Doctor." She said coldly, raising the glass to her lips.

 

Yaz' apartment was four floors above the bar, no elevator of course. It was a humble two-room affair, but with heated bathroom tiles that made your feet tingle with delight after being stuck in drenched boots for hours. Yaz shrugged off her muddy coat and dropped it unceremoniously in a pile on the floor, soon joined by her shirt. "You not gonna get out of that?" she gestured at the Doctors muddy, brown coat. She remembered vaguely it being a light grey, how the edges of it would flap like a cape in the wind on some foreign planet. How she'd looked in the rust-coloured dust back then, backpack on, preparing to do something brilliantly stupid and save the world again...

The Doctor looked at her blankly for a moment, then regarded her mud-caked outfit. 

"Oh, yes, probably should" 

It felt oddly like the old days, like the most natural thing in the world to have Yaz help her peel the coat off and stuff it in the washer. She was just as gorgeous as she'd been all those years ago. The Doctor never felt self-conscious about taking off her clothes in front of people before her. She shrugged the slack braces off her shoulders, colour washed out of them a long time ago, and pulled both cotton shirts off over her head in one move. She was about to remove her bra and trousers as well, but hesitated for a moment to make sure Yaz did the same. It was a completely new feeling, this awkward vulnerability of being so naked with a person you knew so well, but at the same time so eternally distant. Sure, Yaz had just been gone for what could have been a week of her life, relative to Yaz', and not even that. Seeing her again was like restoring a fainted oil painting in her mind's eye, washing away years of forgetting and bringing the sparkle back in every nuance, every detail. How her hair fell when she half-braided it like that, the graceful arch of her neck, the perfectly sculpted fingers. The details flooded her senses, telling her beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was  _the Yaz, her Yaz._ And she wanted to touch her so badly. To hug her, love her, make her wake up from this muddy reality and bring back the brave, strong, loving woman she'd travelled with for so long. But this wasn't her. This was Detective Inspector Yasmin Khan. She'd lost her Yaz when she closed the TARDIS door behind her that final time. 

Yaz had never experienced a silence that was both comforting and awkward at the same time before. There was something buried deep down in her, threatening to flare back up, that had died out many years ago, before Oslo, before transferring to the crime unit, before all of this. 

"The shower is yours if you want it. Just let it run a bit to let it warm up." She strained to maintain eye contact as she spoke, before brushing past her on the way out. "I'll go get us some dry clothes". As she reached the living room, she let out a shuddering breath grasping her arm where the skin had had touched skin in passing. The pricking was electric, the sensation unbearable. Was this an alien-thing, or just the pinings of a touch-starved old grinch? Yaz' swallowed it down, straightened up and headed for the closet. 

 

It's strange how you don't realize how exhausted you are until you sit down. Yaz had almost dozed off on the couch by the time the Doctor appeared from the shower with a yellow towel wrapped around her, skin all pink from the heat and water dripping down on the wooden floor. Her landlord would be furious. She should have laid the clothes out for her in the bathroom, she should tell her they're on the counter, she should- 

Yaz didn't manage any of it, or even complete the thought, before the Doctor plopped down on the couch beside her. Gathering her legs beneath her, she put her hand on Yaz', gently. It all welled up. She couldn't help it. Those bright green eyes caught hers and she was powerless. 

"Look, Yaz," she was frozen in place as she watched those perfect, pink lips form the words from far, far away. She could so easily just-

"I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I left you, I'm so sorry Yaz. You know I couldn't come back, I-" 

Plunging back into her body, Yaz did the only thing she could, the only thing her body would allow her, and leaned into her. Their lips met softly, then harshly, crashing into each other like they'd never been apart. Breathing her in was like coming out of a thick fog and finally tasting fresh air. Her spirit soared as she buried her fingers in her blonde, wet tangles and let herself just melt into the other. When the Doctors hands fell to her hips, it felt like the most natural thing in the world, gentle fingertips dipping into the waistband of her pyjama bottoms, leaving tingly streaks of stardust across her skin in their wake. 

The whole, disastrous night fell away, the whole miserable decade forgotten as they just let go, no bars, no holds, no consequences.

Just for one night. 

In her mind the Doctor would divide the night that couldn't be, and strictly speaking was a day, into three parts. The first was all discovery, finding all the spots she used to know, all the dips and curves her hands used to know so well. Locating new scars, not speaking a word of them, memorising new spots that made Yaz groan in delight. The second part was all heat. Yaz had always been the strongest one, taking a firm hold of the woman beneath her, delighting in the Doctor's every noise and twitch. She'd bend down and kiss her, laughing into it as a hand fumbled, a hold missed. Chuckles gave away to lust, giving in to the sheer force of power that was at the core of what made Yaz, well, Yaz. As much as she'd enjoyed that, the final part of the evening might just as well have been her favourite. Yaz' head snugged securely into her neck, arm draped across her chest as her steady breathing rocked the Doctor's exhausted and delightfully sore body to sleep.

 

Of course, it couldn't last. 

Yaz' reality was stuck between two fixed events in time, and as much as the Doctor hated it, she’d had to leave Yaz there, that final day of their journey. She didn't think she'd ever forget the agony of that last hug, that last smile, that last glimpse of her back as she'd left, only to find that the TARDIS never returned for her as she'd been promised. The Doctor had felt that old pain twitch again as soon as she saw her that night in the forest, knowing she'd have to leave her all over again. 

 

Good thing she had broken that twig before she'd had time to change her mind.

**Author's Note:**

> Hello there, stranger.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed the story! It was mostly written during office hours, on napkins and scraps of paper as I lived though my own Norwegian christmas mess. Please forgive the inevitable grammar mistakes and typos, I got started on this way too late. Let me know if there's anything particularly atrocious. I've never really written an M-rated story before, I hope this was something along the lines of what you were hoping for.
> 
> Happy holidays,  
> FuckingCurlyWurly/Lux


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